Marmota
The Imperial land-dreadnought Marmota was Maximilian's ultimate weapon, designed to both recover and act as a mobile platform for the mighty Valkof. Information Built to Maximilian's specifications in a joint effort with the Imperial navy, this vehicle blurs the line between tank and battleship in a new class called the "terrestrial dreadnought." Four engines and two propellers work in parallel to power this behemoth, allegedly developed as a mobile platform for the Valkof. An experimental artificial Valkyria apparatus is said to have been installed at the rear of its main deck. Stats *Length - 142.5m *Height- 35.8m *Width- 35.2m *Weight- 16,200t *Top Speed- 25km/h *Power- 208,000hp Armaments *Valkof *Mustela 340mm cannon x2 *Mustela 800mm cannon x2 *Krimm N-6MX 130mm cannon x19 *Uranus 37mm machine cannon x12 Strategy First encounter: Diverting the Marmota Your first encounter with Marmota is in Chapter 16: The Maiden's Shield; the task is to lead the Marmota into a trap, using a series of Ragnite bombs to slow it down by causing landslides. These will trigger at the end of the current turn, to give units a chance to get away, and mark their danger areas on the map. You need to shoot two pairs, each at one of the forks in the road; the first pair needs to be down by turn 3, and the second by turn 6. The gimmick of this level is instant death. Any unit run down by the Marmota or caught in a landslide is dead. No medic calls, no three turns, they die instantly. Obviously, this means that it's best to have as small a number of units as you can get away with in the field. As ever, though, CP characters other than Welkin are immune to death and just "retreat." The S / A rank target is 8 turns; like the fight with Batomys, you'll be spending most of these waiting for Maximilian to do things and might well end up maxing out the CP bar. The key to getting the rank is recognising two things: *You only need to shoot four of the Ragnite bombs; the two either side of the blanked-off road straight ahead, and the two either side of the road leading away from the goal flag. Destroying any others will slow the Marmota down too much to get you the top rank. *You only need to move the Edelweiss away from the Marmota; leave Zaka to figure out how to retreat from being crushed under sixteen thousand tons of mobile fortress, you don't need his CP anyway. There are exactly six enemies on the entire map; a Lancer and a Shocktrooper behind the walls on the east road, another Shocktrooper behind a small wall on the East side of the complex with the minefield, and a Lancer, Shocktrooper and the Ace Sniper Shuntr the Mount waiting at the destination. For the A rank, deploy only Alicia (if you haven't got the Splintered Horn medal yet, you can also deploy someone useless to get it, since it's guaranteed they'll get perma-killed here), and give Edelweiss the best accuracy parts you have (You can easily mount Bulletproof Visor, Periscope, Monocle Sight, Rotating Periscope and Firing Calculator for +60 accuracy). Run Alicia ahead and shoot the first two bombs, then go Southeast and kill the Shocktrooper through the gap in the wall, then kill or injure the Lancer; if you only injure him, place Alicia so she'll hit him with interception fire when he goes after the Edelweiss. Move the Edelweiss south. While Marmota might look scary, it largely ignores you; its only attacks are to fire a pair of weak machine guns if you're too close, and to set up a pair of mortar target zones each turn. There's no need to worry about it ever targeting Edelweiss' radiator. Assuming the Lancer is dead, move Alicia to the steel tank traps protecting the minefield and throw a grenade at one to make a path for the Edelweiss. While it might look like hiding Edelweiss in the blocked-off path will protect it from the Marmota as it turns, you'll find what Marmota is actually doing is deleting the upper map as it moves, not just running things over; anything North of it when it ends its move is dead, so you're going to have to move Edelweiss through the minefield. Clear a path through the anti-personnel mines while avoiding the anti-tank mines, and fire a mortar round at the Shocktrooper. Turn West at the South wall and go for the clear exit rather than destroying the tank traps. Have Alicia follow the newly created path, watching for any mines Edelweiss missed, and destroy the other two bombs. Edelweiss can have some fun with all those accuracy parts, since it's entirely possible to kill all three remaining enemies with headshots from the main gun. If you have trouble with the Ace, drop a Smoke Grenade on his head and have Alicia sneak up behind him for the kill. The level ends the instant your turn eight starts if you're already on the objective marker. Second encounter: Marmota's End The second confrontation with the Marmota is the first of two battles in the finale; Chapter 18: Shadow of the Valkyrur. Here, the mission is to destroy the Valkof lance mounted on the Marmota, while dealing with an endless stream of enemy reinforcements and the Marmota's own substantial defences. At the start of the mission, the Valkof is invulnerable and inaccessible; the "Damaged Plating" target needs to be attacked to drop a ramp, and then two Heat Sinks attached to the engines need to be taken out to lower the Valkof's shield. You have five turns to destroy the Valkof in order to net the S / A Rank, and the task can be achieved in four. Cordelia Gi Randgriz might help you out by healing your entire squad to full health. Deploy your four best Lancers in the middle of the formation, with two Shocktroopers to the West and Alicia and your best Sniper to the East; the Sniper needs to be Southernmost. Unlike the previous battle, the Marmota isn't just going to ignore you; there are three Gatling Turrets and two Anti-Tank Turrets on the flank facing you. The Gatlings can be safely ignored, but you need to deal with the anti-tank turrets to avoid the destruction of the Edelweiss. At least one of your Lancers should have a Theimer M20R, the more the better; it takes one shot from this, one from the Edelweiss and one regular Lance to defeat each anti-tank turret, or one from the Edelweiss and three regular Lance shots. The latter is hardly ideal. Start by having your Sniper move South and crouch behind the sandbags, then take out the two enemy Lancers. Next, control the Edelweiss and move so that the tank's radiator is backed up against the Northwest tank wreck, then fire a round at each anti-tank turret from the main gun. Next, control the Lancer with the Theimer M20R and put another round into each, then control another Lancer to put a third round into each to destroy them. On the enemy's turn, the Marmota will probably try to fire at Alicia, but she should evade the gatlings. The enemies to the South will annoy your Shocktroopers, and a Lancer will come down Marmota's ramp and attack Edelweiss; if it's correctly positioned, the Lancer will fire one shot at the front, then try to move around the back to attack the inaccessible radiator and end his turn when he can't make the shot. On your next turn, have the Sniper kill the Lancer and the Shocktrooper up on the Marmota's superstructure. Have one of the Lancers fire at the Damaged Plating target to drop a ramp down, and move them towards the ramp. Now, control Alicia and have her climb the ramp and ladders. There's a Shocktrooper waiting up top, so kill him and then attack the East-facing glowing panel of the two Heat Sinks to destroy them. This will lower the shield protecting the Valkof. Use the rest of your CP moving your Lancers up onto the Marmota. The next two turns will basically consist of firing Lance rounds at the Valkof; feel free to take a couple of CP having the Sniper or Shocktroopers fire at the Southern enemies if they become an annoyance. The Valkof has 21,000 HP, corresponding to about 15 Lance rounds with no Potentials or Orders. Only the very tip is vulnerable. It's capable of electrocuting units on the upper catwalk, but this isn't a one-hit kill on Lancers and shouldn't concern you unless you end up taking more than two turns to destroy it. Trivia *It's not entirely clear what kind of vehicle Marmota actually is; Eleanor Varrot describes it as "battleship on legs" in the briefing for "The Maiden's Shield," but Marmota has no visible structures that resemble legs. Neither does it have visible treads; it seems most likely it's a hovercraft, especially given the use of propellers to drive it. *The structure resembling a bow is actually the stern and the Marmota spends half the scenes it appears in driving backwards. *While plans have been made for larger vehicles, the Marmota is around 2,000 tons heavier than the largest land vehicle ever built, a quarry excavator called Bagger 293. The gun mounting seems to be based on the two large pylons either side of the excavator's bucket wheel; more obviously, though, Marmota resembles a hybrid of a pre-Dreadnought ironclad warship and a large commercial hovercraft. The giant spinal gun mirrors a plan by Nazi Germany to mount the massive 80cm Schwerer Gustav ("Dora") railway gun on a land-based chassis, itself an upscaled version of a plan to mount a Krupp K5 railway gun on a pair of converted King Tiger hulls. *HG Wells' story The Land Ironclads is often said to have anticipated the deployment of the first tanks. Wells' landships were a quarter of the length of the Marmota, but the vehicle is actually fairly typical of the way tank design was thought to be heading in the early days; armoured vehicles the size of oceangoing warships were often thought of as the future of land warfare. Since the Valkyria Chronicles world does not appear to have any military heavier-than-air flight, such a vehicle could concievably have ended up being built. *Marmota is a genus of terrestrial squirrel. Coupled with the Batomys, this may be used to conclude that Imperial designs may have a sense of humor in naming massive machines after small creatures, similar to Nazi Germany having a planned superheavy tank named "Maus" (Mouse), and planned tank so large it would use a battleship turret named "Ratte" (Rat). Category:Vehicles Category:Tanks Category:Antagonists Category:Bosses